“Fifteen years ago, I couldn’t convince people there was a water problem. Now things are different in a good way in that people are more aware that there is a problem, and in a bad way in that the problem is so much more dire.” — Jackie Brookner

Jackie Brookner is a revolutionary among revolutionaries.

All environmental art is inherently revolutionary in that it challenges viewers directly to rethink the ways they interact with nature and to take ownership, for better or worse, of the ways they affect and alter the ecosystem.

Brookner’s Biosculptures–living works of art whose porous surfaces are inhabited by carefully selected organisms whose job it is in nature to clean and filter the toxins out of aquatic ecosystems–raise the bar by presenting that challenge not only to viewers but to the environment itself.

(To see more of Jackie Brookner’s work, visit the Tikkun Daily Art Gallery.)

Biosculptures inhabit a community’s nature space, and often the built environment, becoming a living part of the larger ecosystem. They need no witness to establish their relevance. They are active members of their environment. Through their example they teach the simple, complimentary lessons of self-reliance and interdependence. They are inspirational not only because of their exquisite form but because of their transformational function.

Says Brookner:

The scale of the problems we are facing is so enormous: global warming, international corporate power, pandemics, war, energy shortages, economic collapse. In the face of these problems people often feel powerless, they become pessimistic and therefore passive, which of course makes them better consumers. One thing that is really necessary is to give people a process in which they can engage directly that gives them back their creative agency.

Not that everyone can be or needs to be an artist. Just that folks need to realize they can make a difference in their own lives. They can make a creative impact on themselves and their community on a local level.

In West Palm beach, Florida, Brookner collaborated with the city on the design of a 130-acre park that now features a fourteen-foot biosculpture that uses native plants to filter and clean the water in one of the park’s new lakes (below).

In the Veden Taika (The Magic of Water) project in Salo, Finland, Brookner collborated with local community volunteers, scientists, students, and civic agencies in the art-bio-landscape pictured below.

The following is from Brookner’s website:

Veden Taika consists of three floating islands. The largest island (7.45m x 28m) provides nesting sites for the birds and the two smaller islands (11.45 m x 6 m) contain plants for phytoremediation. These islands are vegetated with plants specially chosen to remove pollutants from the water and sediments, completing the cycle of transformation that began years ago with the sewage treatment process.

Brookner offered this community an opportunity to engage in an ecologically informative, creatively empowering, collaborative process that was healing and transformational for the land, for the native flora and fauna, and for themselves. She says:

I think of my work as something that teaches in the sense that teaching is about mirroring. This work mirrors what we are. It shows us our own natural system, and that we are an integral part of larger natural systems. The imagery is an invitation to think of our environment and ourselves in a different way.

Brookner’s biosculptures are a cross between public art pieces and public servants. They are aesthetically lovely and simultaneously utilitarian and nurturing. And they show a window into the ways we must start to work to solve earth’s water problem.

There isn’t enough clean water available for humanity to sustain its current population level. As we increase our numbers, the water shortage will become more serious. Technology is not yet efficient and affordable enough to purify and deliver huge amounts of water to urban population centers on a massive, ecologically acceptable way.

The current system of diverting water resources from one location to satiate the needs of another — decimating natural ecosystems in a frantic effort to feed the water needs of poorly planned and overcrowded cities, many of which were built in places where there was never enough water in the first place (see: Las Vegas) — is politically and environmentally absurd.

Individually, instead of changing our behaviors and investing directly in healing the environment, our mindset is one of investing money in products and concepts that counter balance our bad habits — electric cars, solar-powered cell phone rechargers, self-filtering water bottle caps.

The science and spirituality of Brookner’s work shows us that we need not be content to sit idly waiting for corporate marketers and public policy makers to tell us what products to buy to take the pain away. The lesson of Brookner’s biosculptures is that we are empowered to solve our own crises if we can start at a more organic level. By her example, Brookner encourages a sustained, intelligent, collaborative effort on a grass-roots level.

If a little biosculpture in the lobby of an office building, or a modest bio-landscape in a drainage pond or in a local wetland can, over time, cleanse the tiny toxic pool in which it sits and transform it into a viable, thriving ecosystem, can we not take the process to a grander level? Might we build a series of hundreds or even thousands of biosculptures and plop them into the middle of Lake Michigan, and in the Pacific Ocean, and in the Red Sea?

This is revolutionary art in that it asserts what has become unspeakable in our consumer culture: that it is our right to understand and take ownership of the natural forces of the world–the air, the water and the soil–and to help nature heal itself.

Writers note: If you have seen Brookner’s website, you may have noticed Brookner trademarked the name Biosculpture. I inquired about this trademark, concerned it was an attempt to control or profit from the concept, and was given the following explanation from Brookner:

“The only thing that is trademarked is the name, not the form nor the function. I was forced to do this because although I invented the name and had been using it publicly for several years, someone else who makes terrariums was in the process of trademarking the name. If he had carried that out, I would not have been able to use the name. My first approach was offering to share the name, but he wasn’t interested in that. So I got a lawyer and challenged his right to use the name. In the end I won, but let him continue to use the name as well, as long as I also had the right to use it in perpetuity. Nevertheless, when I use the word, legally it is supposed to have the TM after it.

Even with the trademark, biosculptures basically function like wetlands and other natural systems that have the capacity to turn waste into resources, cleaning pollutants in the process. These are not, nor should they be, proprietary.”

(To see more of Jackie Brookner’s work, visit the Tikkun Art Gallery, or visit Jackie’s website here.)